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Drawing on anthropological fieldwork carried out in the two Pentecostal congregations Red Hill and Olive Tree in Durban, South Africa, this dissertation discusses the complexity of the experience of belonging among the members. Red Hill is a ‘coloured’ congregation, while Olive Tree is ‘white’; a fact that in present-day South Africa still is of significance for the experience of belonging. With a phenomenological perspective on belonging, the dissertation discusses the aspects of home-making, balance and control, and emphasises how the experience of belonging includes both a temporal and a spatial dimension, as well as experiences of fear and hope.

The following aspects of belonging are discussed: the experience of living in apartheid South Africa as a ‘coloured’ and ‘white’ and how these experiences continue to affect individuals; the conversion experience as an experience of ‘coming home’, existentially and socially through the belonging to a congregation; gendered aspects of the belonging experience in the context of the two congregations; different ways that the Pentecostal conviction are manifested in local and global social work and outreach; how the interpretation of ‘Israel’ works as a symbol of home-coming and belonging, though invoked in different ways in the two congregations. Inherent to these various experiences of belonging are power dynamics at different levels. These aspects point to the experience of belonging as an intersubjective experience that empowers both the individual and the collective.

While the future is often stressed in the Pentecostal discourse and in much of the literature on Pentecostalism, this dissertation suggests the importance of taking past experiences into account when trying to understand how Pentecostalism manifests itself.